


Gasoline

by floatsodelicately



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Nathan POV, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 07:59:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5409101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floatsodelicately/pseuds/floatsodelicately
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sort of non-canon.</p>
<p>Nathan feels something, then feels something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gasoline

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of non-canon but still a little bit canon. Just reflective. A writing exercise that I liked.

He can't remember when it started. It was a slow fade that left him devoid of all sensation. There was no trauma or shock that fried his nerve endings, scans and tests showed no evidence of any defect.   
  
He didn't know when or how it happened, but at 8 years old, when the doctor pulled the shards of glass from his feet, all he could say was: "Huh..."   
  
He could feel once, he knew that. He had felt the pain of skinned knees on asphalt, paper cuts and the burn of drinks that were too hot. But this wasn't like the dead arm that a boy in his class gave him one day, it was a complete absence of feeling. No tingling or heaviness, no awareness at all, just a void.   
  
Memories of sensations were maddening when it had been years since you felt the warmth of the sun on your skin, since you felt the touch of another, since you weren't scared of what you couldn't feel.   
  
Because not being able to feel the cold doesn't mean you can't get hypothermia, not feeling how hot it is won’t protect you from heatstroke. A few years of obsessively checking weather reports throughout the day and keeping an assortment of both light and heavy jackets in the back of the car soon calmed down to glances at the barometer and weather app alerts, though the jackets didn't all make it back into the closet.  Electric shavers don't do the job as well but a wet razor may lead to a self-inflicted Sweeney Todd-esque moment which would not be in the least bit fun, so it'll have to do.

But the dreams and memories didn’t compare to actually being able to feel the pressure of her kiss. When Audrey pecked his cheek before leaving, she didn’t see him fall off the edge of his desk in shock. How could it be that something that she didn’t even think about, something she did automatically, was the first thing in decades that he had felt? He kept his hand to the spot for hours after she had gone, leaning his head on his hand while he finished his paperwork as if he wasn’t trying to trap the heat of her touch on his skin.

He checked the thermostat before he went to bed that night, still trying to think of a time that she had touched him, surely it hadn’t taken the six months since she had moved to his office for them to make some kind of contact. He couldn’t remember one tap on the shoulder, or grazing her hand at all, only a chaste goodbye kiss that left him in a heap on the floor.

The next day, the shock of her touch on his arm still surprised him, making him jump and spill his coffee. But when she rushed to apologise and fretted over his scolded hand with paper towels, he smiled happily, warm with something that definitely wasn’t coffee.


End file.
